Psycho-Cybernetics: Updated and Expanded (The Psycho-Cybernetics Series)

by Maxwell Maltz

The lonely personality is afraid of other people. The lonely person often complains that he has no friends, and there are no people to mix with. In most cases, he unwittingly arranges things in this manner because of his passive attitude, that it is up to other people to come to him, to make the first move, to see that he is entertained. It never occurs to him that he should contribute something to any social situation. Regardless of your feelings, force yourself to mix and mingle with other people. After the first cold plunge, you will find yourself warming up and enjoying it if you persist. Develop some social skill that will add to the happiness of other people: dancing, bridge, playing the piano, tennis, conversation. It is an old psychological axiom that constant exposure to the object of fear immunizes against the fear. As the lonely person continues to force himself into social relations with other human beings—not in a passive way, but as an active contributor—he will gradually find that most people are friendly, and that he is accepted. His shyness and timidity begin to disappear. He feels more comfortable in the presence of other people and with himself. The experience of their acceptance of him enables him to accept himself.

Everyone Has Personality Locked Up Within Him Every human being has the mysterious something we call personality. When we say that a person “has a good personality,” what we really mean is that he has freed and released the creative potential within him and is able to express his real self.

“Poor personality” and “inhibited personality” are one and the same. The person with a “poor personality” does not express the creative self within. He has restrained it, handcuffed it, locked it up and thrown away the key. The word “inhibit” literally means to stop, prevent, prohibit, restrain. The inhibited personality has imposed a restraint on the expression of the real self. For one reason or another he is afraid to express himself, afraid to be himself, and has locked up his real self within an inner prison. The symptoms of inhibition are many and varied: shyness, timidity, self-consciousness, hostility, feelings of excessive guilt, insomnia, nervousness, irritability, inability to get along with others. Frustration is characteristic of practically every area and activity of the inhibited personality. His real and basic frustration is his failure to “be himself’ and his failure to adequately express himself. But this basic frustration is likely to color and overflow into all that he does.

Keep in mind that excessive negative feedback has the effect of interfering with, or stopping completely, the appropriate response.

When you become too consciously concerned about “what others think”; when you become too careful to consciously try to please other people; when you become too sensitive to the real or fancied disapproval of other people—then you have excessive negative feedback, inhibition, and poor performance. Whenever you constantly and consciously monitor your every act, word, or mannerism, again you become inhibited and self-conscious. You become too careful to make a good impression, and in so doing choke off, restrain, inhibit your creative self and end up making a rather poor impression. The way to make a good impression on other people is: Never consciously “try” to make a good impression on them. Never act, or fail to act, purely for consciously contrived effect. Never “wonder” consciously what the other person is thinking of you, how he is judging you.

“This attitude of being immune to strangers or strange situations, this total disregard for all the unknown or unexpected has a name. It is called poise. Poise is the deliberate shunting aside of all fears arising from new and uncontrollable circumstances.”

If you are among the millions who suffer unhappiness and failure because of inhibition—you need to deliberately practice disinhibition. You need to practice being less careful, less concerned, less conscientious. You need to practice speaking before you think instead of thinking before you speak—acting without thinking, instead of thinking or “considering carefully” before you act.

Any normal person who is intelligent enough to understand the situation becomes “excited” or “nervous” just before a crisis situation. Until you direct it toward a goal, this excitement is neither fear, anxiety, courage, confidence, nor anything else other than a stepped-up, reinforced supply of emotional steam in your boiler. It is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign of additional strength to be used in any way you choose.

Within you is a vast mental storehouse of past experiences and feelings—both failures and successes. Like inactive recordings on tape, these experiences and feelings are recorded on the neural engrams of your gray matter. There are recordings of stories with happy endings, and recordings of stories with unhappy endings. One is as true as the other. One is as real as the other. The choice is up to you as to which you select for playback.

A stored automobile needs no gasoline in the tank. And a goal-striver with no goals doesn’t really need much life force. I believe that we establish this need by looking forward to the future with joy and anticipation, when we expect to enjoy tomorrow, and above all, when we have something important (to us) to do and somewhere to go.

Everything in life is a mental picture. Every goal you have begins as a picture in your mind. And anything you don’t like about yourself or your life can be changed by changing your mental pictures. Never forget: Even forgiveness is a mental picture.”